Trajectory Management for Aircraft Noise Mitigation

This paper gives an overview of aircraft trajectory management aimed at producing noise abatement procedures. Area Navigation (RNAV) concepts play an important role in the design of flexible and, therefore, noise friendly depart or approach procedures. In addition, the lowest dispersion of RNAV tracks help to contain noise footprints in a smaller area if compared with footprints that are produced when conventional procedures are flown. However, RNAV turns still produce a significant amount of dispersion because of different aircraft performance and different Flight Management Systems (FMS) implementation. Noise exposure can be also mitigated if the aircraft trajectory is conveniently modified in the vertical plane. In this work, a brief overview of different lateral and vertical noise abatement strategies is given. Theoretical optimal trajectories are also assessed presenting some results of previous research done by the authors. The annoyance produced by aircraft noise in different noise sensitive locations is taken as minimization objective. This annoyance not only takes into account the measured acoustic values but also other important aspects that will affect the perceived annoyance by the population. The concept of equitable trajectories is also presented, where noise annoyance is minimized in the worst noise sensitive location and not as an average value for all locations.